


No Best Friends (Well One But He's Crazy)

by geckoholic



Series: author's favorites [8]
Category: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Genre: Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7214737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the day after the enemy has mysteriously bolted from the battlefield, an American officer strolls into Rita's training area with a huge grin and a weird story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Best Friends (Well One But He's Crazy)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [telm_393](https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/gifts).



> Your request was post-movie friendship with added PTSD. I didn't quite manage much of the latter, but here you have a bit of the former.
> 
> Beta-read by roseredfingers. Thank you!! ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Title is from "Save The Day" by Train.

There are children who spend their time daydreaming about the impact they will have on the world, imagining themselves famous, wanted, coveted, through sports or entertainment careers, political office or simply looks. Rita was never among them. It’s not that she didn’t have any aspirations in life; it’s just that she couldn’t have been less concerned whether or not they would involve public approval.

Then came Verdun, and now it’s her, Rita Vrataski, that everyone’s talking about, wants to know or meet or generally claim a piece of. High-up military, she’s found out, are no exception, and can occasionally pursue the object of their admiration with the fierceness of a fifteen year old boy out to meet his sports idol. This is why she doesn’t bat an eye at the American officer who strolls into her training area and grins like he’s just won the lottery.

“What do you want?” she asks, head cocked, massaging a cramp out of the knotted-up muscles in her shoulder. 

His expression sobers, and he smooths non-existent creases out of his spotless uniform. “A coffee, for starters? Tell Dr. Carter to join us, I have a few complaints about his machine. Stupid torture device. Worked, but dammit, that thing _stings_.”

Rita’s first instinct is to throw him down and twist his arms behind his neck. The second is telling him to fuck off so she can get back to training. But there’s nothing left she’ll have to train _for_ and he’s just bold and cryptic enough that she can’t quite bring herself to tell him no.

 

***

 

They have their coffee in the back room, from brazen mugs over the projector, and his story is so outlandish and over the top that Rita figures it must be true; either that or he’s flat-out bonkers. The evidence points towards the former, at least: he knows more about their little theories than she’d ever told another living soul, and the mimics _have_ mysteriously been defeated.

The only part she can’t quite wrap her head around is that she’s supposedly went and saved the world with the help of a suit monkey from across the ocean, but stranger things have happened, she guesses.

 

***

 

That evening, she goes to bed with the intention to look ahead, forget about a past she can’t remember, instead turn her attention on what she can do to help her country rebuild. Her wartime fame has to be good for something more, right?

In the morning, she picks up the card he gave her and dials the private cell number scribbled on the back. He answers on the second ring, like he’s been waiting for her, knows how little she can do to control her curiosity. It throws her for a loop, how strange and yet oddly comforting that is. There aren’t many people left in the world who know her that well.

“You free for lunch?” she asks.

He confirms, unsurprisingly, and suggests one of her favorite coffee shops. Rita chooses not to dwell on that.

 

***

 

They awkwardly stare at each other over coffee and sandwiches. Somehow Rita thought this would be easier. She considers herself a pretty good judge of character, and she trusted him enough to have her back through a battle for survival of the entire human race. Then again, that was war – fellow soldiers who work well as a team in battle don’t always get on off the battlefield – and his main qualification was the fact that he got bled on by the right mimic. Random happenstance. Beyond that, they don’t have anything in common.

Having finished his sandwich, Cage pushes his plate to the side and reaches over the table for the coffee pot. He nods towards her cup. She nods in return. He refills her coffee for her, puts in the perfect amount of sugar and stirs. Holds it out to her, and she takes a sip, shaking her head at him, frowning.

“It’s not fair,” she says. “You know me, but I don’t know you.”

He grins. It looks aimed at cocksure and casual, but his eyes betray more depth, more meaning, a connection on his part that runs deeper than she can begin to figure out. “I’ve got a couple hundred repetitions on you. Don’t worry. You’ll get there.”

Normally she’d take offense from the way he implies that them getting to know each other – and her interest in just that – is a foregone conclusion. But the emotions on his face are still there, plain to see, with no effort to keep them hidden on his part. She remembers what it's like to care for someone who won’t even know your name the next time you meet, and the next, and the next, so many times over, and she allows him the attitude.

Rita wraps both hands around her coffee mug and nods. “Same time tomorrow, then?”

 

***

 

As chance will have it, they soon start to see a lot more of each other. He’s some sort of talking head, sprouting smart theories on TV and generally making the military look good in news headlines. She’s the Angel of Verdun, the woman who single-handedly turned a war around and the most convenient figure to pin the mysterious victory on too – how right they are about that gives her more than one good laugh in private. They get invited to more than one interview together, and once they’re done, they go out for whatever meal seems appropriate given the time of day.

After a while, Rita learns to read him better. She recognizes which stories and anecdotes she must have already told him, because he stops listening and instead just looks at her, fondly, forlorn. She learns his quirks and habits, his food orders, the jokes that actually make him laugh and the ones he only rewards with a groan and an eyeroll. She catches up.

 

***

 

They share adjourning hotel rooms sometimes, because the military is a cheapskate during the best of times and doubly so after a war that depleted their resources within an inch of any chance for survival. Those nights, they’ll order terrible junk food via room service and watch old movies while they pretend neither of them has any idea why the other can’t sleep.

Cage is sitting next to her on the bed. They’re both leaning against the headboard with their legs crossed at the ankles, a plate of fried chicken and chips lying between them, and he points at the TV screen with a greasy, dripping chicken wing. It’s a good thing no one intends on sleeping in these sheets; they’ll be beyond gross. Rita looks over to the screen and sees a young couple climb into a trailer, the guy looking back at their white picket fence like they’re about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime.

“We used one like these to get away from that beach. You forgot to unhook the trailer from the car, and a few miles down the road a mimic jumped out of it. I think it was the same brand, even.”

On the last words, he lowers his voice, like a question, and looks over, and Rita has to shrug at him. That’s his memory. She may have been there, but she has no recollection of it all, and she never will.

“Ah, you don't remember,” he says, his expression oddly sad, colored by loss and regret and something else, something sharper. “Now and then I forget that.”

Rita figures it's best not to ask what exactly he's grieving; war sics demons on everyone. She learned a long time ago not to summon anyone else's without good reason, and she has an inkling anyway, one she doesn’t need or want confirmed. She shakes her head. “I’m sorry.” 

He inhales and reaches for the remote, changes the channel to a teleshopping show. Rita rolls her eyes and picks up another handful of potato chips, throws one at him, and laughs when it lands on his T-shirt, leaving a long greasy trail as it slides further down.

Her attempts at comfort have never been particularly elegant.

 

***

 

He tries to kiss her once, during one of these late hotel room nights. Or rather, he leans in and inclines his head in a clear offer, and she shakes hers and glares at him down her nose. He looks away and clears his throat, and that’s that.

For days, she wonders if something else had existed between them in one – or more than one – of his repetitions. Whether they’d kissed; whether he knows what she looks like naked and spread out on dirty sheets or the bare ground or wherever else they’d managed to steal away a few minutes.

She never asks him, though, and he never tries again.

 

*** 

 

It takes a while for the war to also end in people's minds, but it happens eventually. Rita gets a gig training recruits on technology that seems overblown for warfare among humans, but it exists, so hey; Cage gets reassigned back to the US. 

He calls her from outside the airport in Washington, roundabout two in the morning for her, and he's damn lucky that she's still up anyway. 

“I just walked past a magazine with a union jack on the cover,” he says over street noise and faraway airport announcements. “It's like you're haunting me.” 

Rita puts her TV on mute and stretches out on the couch, barks a laugh at him, and chooses not to tell him that she couldn’t sleep or how glad she is to hear his voice. “You're the one calling me in the middle of the night because you’ve only just set foot on American soil and you miss me already.” 

There's a pause when Cage covers the speaker to talk to someone, and she can't understand the muffled argument. When he's back on, he sighs. “You know what I didn't miss? Trying to grab a cab in basically any American city.” 

“That's because none of you know how to drive,” she teases. “Of course big city traffic over there is a bloody mess.”

He yells something in the other direction that she can't quite make out, then sighs again, more dramatically this time. “Goddammit.” 

What she wants is to listen to his efforts trying to hail that stupid cab, feel like she's there with him, like they won't spend the rest of their lives with an ocean between them. She got used to having him around, telling her stories about hundreds of what-ifs she doesn't remember, and telling him about her loop in turn. The only two people in the whole wide world who could truly understand how it feels. But that's over, and so is the war. One of them should be an adult about this, and it sure as hell won't be him. 

“I'm going to hang up now,” Rita says. She glances at her stack of notes for the coming Monday, then at the poster of herself on the opposite wall; it'd already been there when she moved in, and she didn't have the heart to throw it away. “If you call me again before, say, tomorrow at noon, I'll straight-up ignore you.” 

She hangs up to what's most likely muttered curses on the entire lineage of every single cab driver in New York. Smiling to herself, she reaches for her laptop, powering it up, so she can check what time that translates to for her. If she's asleep when he calls – probably fifteen minutes late, because it's Cage and military punctuality remains a foreign concept to him – she'll never hear the end of it.


End file.
